Nova Scotia targets physicians with new immigration stream

The Nova Scotia Nominee Program has unveiled a new stream aimed at attracting general practitioners, family physicians, and specialist physicians. This new stream is intended to expedite the immigration process for physicians, and Nova Scotia hopes that the lack of red tape and paperwork will be a strong advantage in attracting trained physicians to the province. Nova Scotia hopes that this stream will help address its persistent shortage of family doctors.

This advantage will currently only apply to doctors who are already able to work in Nova Scotia, not other foreign-trained physicians. The stream targets family doctors from countries with recognized training equivalencies with the College of Family Physicians of Canada. This is intended to streamline the process for doctors who have already demonstrated training similar to that in Canada and who have been licensed by the province’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.

To this end, this stream is only open to General Physicians (NOC 3122) and Specialist Physician (NOC 3111) who have a signed approved offer from the Nova Scotia Health Authority or the Izaak Walton Killam (IWK) Health Centre.

In addition to a job offer from the Nova Scotia Healthy Authority of the IWK Health Centre, applicants must also meet the following criteria:

• Legal status in their country of residence;
• An Educational Credential Assessment or other proof of education and medical training required for licensure in Nova Scotia; and
• Language ability. Determination of language ability is not reliant on language testing scores

The recruitment of doctors to Nova Scotia remains a priority. The Nova Scotia Minister of Health, Randy Delorey, has also said that a report seeking to re-establish a program to assess other foreign-trained doctors in working its way through the health department. It is hoped that this program may replace Nova Scotia’s Clinician Assessment for Practice Program (CAPP) which was cancelled by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia in 2015 as new national standards were being brought in.